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Chief Rabbi Moses Rosen, who helped hundreds of thousands of Jews flee the country during the Communist era and settle in Israel, died today in Bucharest. He was 81.

He died of heart failure, the Romanian Federation of Jewish Communities said, after suffering a stroke three weeks ago.

Rabbi Rosen drew attention most recently for his condemnation of a wave of anti-Semitic propaganda that began after the collapse of Communist rule and the execution of the dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in 1989.

He was elected by a congress of 600 Romanian rabbis in 1948, when the Nazi Holocaust had already reduced the number of Romanian Jews from 850,000 to 400,000. Most Jews Left Romania

Some critics faulted Rabbi Rosen for thinning the ranks of the Jewish population, while others criticized him for allowing money to be funneled to Mr. Ceausescu in return for exit visas.

Apart from the cost, they contended, the emigration policy gave a corrupt Stalinist dictator a fig leaf of respectability in the eyes of much of the West and helped Romania gain trade benefits with the United States.

"I urge the extension of most-favored-nation status and must express resentment against those who seek to make Jews the scapegoat in their attempts to block its extension for their own reasons," he wrote in an article on the Op Ed page of The New York Times.

"The lives, institutions and free emigration of Romanian Jews should not be drawn into an issue with which they have no part or responsibility, or interest." Exodus of 400,000

But the Chief Rabbi always acknowledged the paradox of his quest. "I was able to destroy my community, bringing without much noise or fuss about 400,000 Jews out of Romania and to Israel," he said in an interview in 1990, a few months after Mr. Ceausescu was overthrown.

Moses Rosen was born on July 9, 1912, in Moinesti, a village in the northeastern Moldovian region, into a family of Orthodox Jews. He studied law in Bucharest.

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Under the military dictatorship of the Iron Guard movement, Romania entered World War II as an ally of Nazi Germany. Like many of Romania's Jews, Rabbi Rosen's family suffered from pogroms carried out by their own countrymen and as internees of labor and death camps run by the Nazis.

His older brother, Elias, was a rabbi and led the Jewish population at the Auschwitz camp in Poland, Rabbi Rosen recalled in his memoirs, "Dangers, Trials and Miracles," in 1991. Wrote About the Holocaust

"The Nazis then sent my brother, his wife and their two children to Bezin, another camp in Poland where they were assassinated," he wrote. Rabbi Rosen survived the death camps to write about the horrors of the Holocaust, in which six million Jews are estimated to have perished.

After Soviet-backed Communists seized power in 1945, he used his powers of persuasion and other strategies to secure the emigration of as many Jews as possible to Israel.

"I recall those dreadful days; I felt like a man climbing a mountain with a sack full of Jewish sorrows on my back," Rabbi Rosen said in a speech on his 80th birthday in 1992, when he was honored by Israeli leaders including President Chaim Herzog.

"But my dream was to reach the top of that mountain, and to throw off that sack laden with the suffering and sorrows of my people," he said. Denounced Tributes

Over the last four years, Rabbi Rosen has spoken out repeatedly against a wave of anti-Semitic harassment and tributes to Nazi-era figures like Marshal Ion Antonescu, the Romanian dictator who ordered pogroms and deportations to death camps that took the lives of at least 250,000 Jews.

On the 45th anniversary of his execution as a war criminal, Antonescu was honored by the Romanian Parliament, whose members rose in a minute of silent tribute.

"The death of Moses Rosen is an irreparable loss to us," Rabbi Rosen's chief deputy, Sorin Iulian, said today.

Surviving Rabbi Rosen is his wife of 45 years, Amalia.

A version of this obituary; biography appears in print on May 7, 1994, on Page 1001030 of the National edition with the headline: No Headline. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe